Video: Why my view of Yorkshire is better than 3D, by David Hockney

DAVID Hockney today said his new technique of filming video art is “better than 3D”.

The 74-year-old artist, who moved back to his native Yorkshire to work on a collection of pieces, uses nine cameras to create a movie of a road through the four seasons.

An exhibition focussing on his landscapes called David Hockney: Bigger Picture will go on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from January 21 to April 9, 2012.

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Spanning five decades of his work, the collection features pieces the artist created on his iPad alongside watercolours, oil paintings and sketches.

Speaking of his multi-camera medium, which he used to film hour-and-a-half long scenes along Wold Gate in Bridlington, he said: “Naturally, it took a year to film this.

“You can see a lot more with nine cameras, naturally. I think it’s better than 3D.

“I think 3D’s a big error, a mistake, there’s something wrong with it.

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“There’s a great deal of new things going on. Marvellous new things.

“There are wonderful new things if people get to know them and do them, I think.”

Hockney said he often sat for hours on end to work out the exact movements of the sun to make sure he could capture the most vibrant colours in his work.

He added about his video work: “They are very clear. Everything is in focus, but you have to scan the picture.

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“There are nine perspectives there. Your eye has to constantly scan, like it does in real life.

“With one perspective it doesn’t - everything is seen the same.”

The exhibition - the first major collection in the UK of Hockney’s art - will include three groups of new work he made since 2004 when he returned to Bridlington.

Although the artist was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, his family is from the East Yorkshire seaside town.

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Hockney moved to the California in the 1960s, where he worked on some of his most famous landscapes, but he said returning to the UK allowed him to work in peace.

He said: “In LA you would have needed permits and all kinds of things. But in nice remote little Bridlington it’s perfect for us - a little road nobody goes on.

“I said, ‘We’re going to make it as exciting as the Grand Canyon.’

“It’s the way you look at things that counts.”

Bigger Picture will largely focus on his new work, but it will contain some of his famous past pieces, which curators hope will give visitors a sense of the artist’s journey.

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The celebrated works include Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians (1965), Garrowby Hill (1998) and A Closer Grand Canyon (1998).

Hockney was asked by the curators to create new works for the exhibition, and the artist said it encouraged him to “think bigger”.

The collection will take up the majority of the major rooms in the Royal Academy, and Hockney said he was keen to make the most of the huge space on offer.

He said: “You’re not going to do a very, very big painting unless you’ve got a big wall to put it on, otherwise you wouldn’t even do it.

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“It made you think bigger. And I’m perfectly aware of the title - the Bigger Picture has all kinds of meanings.

“I think most people can’t see bigger pictures at all.”

Hockney is a famous champion of modern techniques and using the latest gadgets to create works of art.

The pensioner said it gives artists options they did not have previously.

He said: “I started drawing on an iPad and then we began to print them bigger, we had the software to do it, and I was quite amazed at the effect.

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“The iPad is a very new medium for artists, but it has certain things about it that are quite fantastic.

“One of them is speed with which you could establish colour, palette, faster than any other medium I have ever come across.”

Asked if new technology, such as iPads, would encourage budding artists to experiment, he said: “Loads of people could be artists if you make some effort.”

However, he said artists need to be prepared to challenge themselves.

“In a way,” he said, “most people do things too easy, they just go for the easy way.

“An artist can’t do that.”